ON A BOAT WITH NO NAME 1887
In 1887, Dr. Alfred R.C. Selwyn, the director of the Geological Survey, assigned to Low the task of inspecting the geology and mapping the outlines of the islands of James Bay. Since its incorporation in 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company had concentrated its efforts in mapping the harbours for its posts along James Bay, so maps and nautical charts of features beyond the harbours were not accurate. Very little previous geological work had been done on the islands.
Low needed a sailboat. A canoe was dangerous to use in the shallow “shoaly” waters of James Bay. When a canoe is stranded by the low tide, it can be miles from the shore with no fresh water available. The crew has to get out of the canoe and stand in the muck to protect its bottom while waiting for the incoming tide. James Bay is a dangerous, and uncomfortable, place to be in a canoe.
Imagine Low's scene of departure from Ottawa on May 19 for his 1887 trip. Low's daughter, Estelle, was a year and a half old, and already Low had been absent five months during that time. He was now off again. His wife Isabella would have accompanied him to the train station with Estelle in her arms, to say goodbye for a voyage from which he might never be seen again. The scene has been played out in many movies — puffs of steam rising from the tracks, crowds of people, the men in long dark coats, the “womenfolk” in long dresses and wide-brimmed hats, waving, tears in their eyes. Low gives Isabella and Estelle a quick hug, and climbs on board. The whistle blows, the massive iron wheels turn and the train slowly pulls away. Low looks out the window at his family. Is he regretting his choice of career that takes him on such long trips away from his family? We just don't know.
Low first went to the fishing port of Collingwood2 on Georgian Bay where he purchased a small fishing boat to use in James Bay3 for the princely sum of $250.4 The boat was a typical Lake Huron fishing boat of the time, with a retractable centreboard (this would be a great feature in the shallow waters of James Bay), two masts, open, and built of lap-straked pine. It was 28 feet long5 and likely weighed between one and two tons. It had no deck and, when becalmed, it could be rowed with heavy ten-foot-long oars. Used on a later trip, the vessel was described as large enough to carry two tons of provisions, six men and two large canoes.
Low shipped this boat and supplies for the voyage by rail to the Missinaibi Station on the Canadian Pacific Railroad in Northern Ontario. The railway journey in this section of Ontario must have provided a sense of adventure as it had been opened only in 1885. There he and his assistant James Macoun (the botanist who had accompanied Low on his trip down the Rupert in 1885) and four other men that Low had hired for the summer, unloaded his boat. Low also engaged a large birchbark canoe and several Cree canoemen at the station to help him move all the supplies to James Bay. The expedition headed north across the height of land to the Missinaibi River, and began the 350-mile trip to Moose Factory at the southern tip of James Bay.6 Low and his crew hauled the boat across the 25 portages,7 including one that was two miles in length, making this a long and laborious trip. To cross the portages, the boat would have been winched or dragged on rollers, as it was too heavy to carry. Today people paddling down the Missinaibi in lightly loaded canoes take three weeks to go to Moose Factory. Low and his crew did the trip in the same amount of time with the sailboat plus food supplies for three months, arriving in Moose Factory on June 27 — an incredible feat!
Sailing from Moose Factory to lower James Bay, Low surveyed 15 of the larger islands,8 making a paced survey around each one and fixing its latitude with a sextant. Camps were made on the islands as the boat had no covered area for sleeping. Agoomski (now called Akimiski) Island, the largest one in James Bay, was found to be very low and swampy. The shallow, murky water and the barricades of boulders and sandbars, made sailing in these waters very tricky. On North Twin Island Low found a sloop wrecked in 1886 and a lifeboat from a ship not known to the Hudson's Bay Company, his finds attesting to the hazards of sailing in this area.
Sailing conditions in James Bay were difficult in an open boat. Fog or rain, or both, occurred on 35 days out of the 58 they were there. Bumping against rocks hidden in the treacherous waters, sometimes half a mile from shore, caused leaking and damage to the hull of the ship. The shallow water and frequent gales made the tides unpredictable. On August 8, Low records the effect of a moderate gale, “Here the ordinary rise of tide does not exceed five feet, yet after beaching the boat at 8 p.m., by midnight the water was twelve feet deep, showing a rise of at least seven feet above its ordinary level.”9 Low and his men, camped near the boat, must have had a very wet and miserable night.
Sailing boats were common on James Bay. This large vessel may have been operated by the Hudson's Bay Company when A.P. Low photographed it at Fort George in 1896. Courtesy of Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, photo GSC199529, A.P. Low.
Low recorded information about the various harbours on the east coast and their depths for shipping. Specifically, he obtained information on depths and locations of channels and sand bars, estimates of tides and the locations of deep water for docking. In the 1880s, the Canadian government was considering building a railway to a port on either James or Hudson bays.10 The key question revolved around the location of the best harbour. Low believed it to be at the mouth of the Big River (now La Grande Rivière), but thought the cost of building a railway there was prohibitive as large bridges would have to be constructed over the Rupert, Eastmain and other rivers.
Low made some interesting observations on this trip as part of his general inventory. The soil along the rivers of the south of James Bay “…appears to be good, and as the climate to the southward is probably favourable for the growth of cereals and root crops, nothing prevents future settlement in this region after the filling up of the north-west except that without an extensive system of drainage, the lands remote from the river will be found too wet for farming.”11 Well, not all predictions come true, and A.P. Low was not a crop or soils specialist. Nevertheless, in Low's day, the Hudson's Bay Company fed their employees with milk, butter and cheese from cattle kept at Rupert House and Eastmain, and with root crops grown with success as far north as Fort George.
Unlike his view on farming, Low was well-qualified to make observations on surficial glacial deposits and on the rise of the land following the retreat of the continental ice sheets. Some of his conclusions disputed the theories12of his more senior colleague (and later, as acting director of the Geological Survey, his boss) Robert Bell. A.P. also was an astute naturalist, and noted that the rich berry crops on several of the islands attracted bears. He told a “story” of two encounters with bears on islands in James Bay to Alexander Ross, his assistant on his 1892 Eastmain trip, who recorded it:
…came across a bear some distance from shore. M. [James Macoun] had a tin pail in his hand, and asked the Chief [Low] to return to the canoe for a rifle. Objection being raised, he exclaimed, “Oh! Never mind me. You get the shooting irons, and I'll amuse his nibs.” A steady advance was now made upon the astonished monster, who just as steadily retreated before the waving of the pail and the gentle “shoo-shoo”-ing of the intrepid Jimmie. The Chief returning with his Winchester, Bruin soon came to grief.
Coming suddenly upon another bear, the Chief, in his surprise, hurled a book of micrometer tables at him. These he caught, tore to pieces, and ate. Afterwards the pieces were recovered, spread out, placed together, interpolations made, and a copy of the whole transferred to paper. This task seriously impaired the bear's digestion and delayed the survey two days.13
Polar bears provided some tense moments on this trip, although it was the bears who suffered in the end. In a presentation on the potential of big-game hunting to the Boone and Crockett Club of New York (a group of hunters that included the future U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt among its members),14 Low told of killing four polar bears in these islands.
To return to Ottawa, Low and his crew sailed to Moose Factory, where he stored his boat, canoed up the Missinaibi River and caught